IMPERIAL DIFFERENCES

Imperial Differences was initiated during an art residency at SPACES where Hallberg addressed topics of the acclaimed Kitchen Dialogues via Russians living in Cleveland, Ohio. With Hallberg this specific community dismantle covert topics in social and political contingencies, and the relation between domesticity and political containment. The two fold video work consists of Overlap Between Two, where extracts from longer conversations are assembled in an essay film format, combining interview footage and reworked material from the public domain. The other video with the title Borderland is a cinematic prelude to the essay film, with desolate view of a forest with lingering fog.

The first segment of Imperial Differences is in dialogue with The American National Exhibition in Moscow 1959, the film Glimpses of the U.S.A by Charles and Ray Eames and the Kitchen Debate, in which, by a series of serendipities, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev engaged in a debate highlighting the benefits of the two ideological systems, communism and capitalism.

Hallberg continues the project by researching a series of public speeches taking place in Cleveland relating to the dynamics of imperial differences.

Assistants during the SPACES/SWAP Residency:Yana Mikho-Misho; contacts with Russian institutions, organizations and individuals, translations, and video assistant.Juliet Perry; Research on American National Exhibition & Russian sites in Cleveland as well as migration.

Residency Funding:

Anna Viola Hallbergs work – as an artist and curator – interacts with specific communities, while addressing social or political contingencies.